Insights

Weraki’s notes on strategy, operations and Vietnam’s consumer markets. Most were first published in Vietnamese on the Chị chủ tiệm page.

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• Leadership8 min read Growing pains: why a business gets more exhausting as it growsRevenue is up, customers are up, the team is bigger, yet the owner is busier than ever. That is rarely a sign of failure. More often it is the sign of a business growing faster than its own internal capacity.
• Strategy8 min read Don’t stand in the middle of the barbell unless you know the rulesA product that used to sell easily is now harder to sell than the cheapest option on the market, and harder than a high-value one too. That isn’t chance. It is the sign of a market structure that has shifted.
• LeadershipJuly 13, 2026 · 6 min read Are highly structured people busy?What stands out in the best founders and leaders isn’t how fast they run. It is how they are organized on the inside.
• LeadershipMay 25, 2026 · 5 min read When founders pay for commitment with “the future”When a company doesn’t yet have strong cash flow but starts to need more operating capability, many founders unconsciously recruit with vision and a future that hasn’t arrived. The problem is that founders and employees are making very different bets.
• LeadershipMay 19, 2026 · 4 min read When a “star” becomes a hidden cost to the organizationShould you keep someone who is excellent but doesn’t fit the company culture? At first glance it is a people decision. At a deeper level, it is a strategic decision about how the organization runs.
• Food & beverageMay 7, 2026 · 7 min read Vietnam’s milk tea industry isn’t cursed. It’s competing at the wrong levelWhere are the names that had whole streets queuing five to eight years ago?
• StrategyMay 6, 2026 · 9 min read Unit economics isn’t a metric. It’s how you choose your game.The most common advice for small businesses starting to think about scale: win on unit economics first. Make sure every order, every customer, creates real value before you multiply.
• RetailMay 4, 2026 · 12 min read No message is accidentalDecoding Meiyijia’s strategy as it enters Vietnam. The number 40,000 isn’t there to describe them. It may be there to position you.
• StrategyApril 16, 2026 · 6 min read There is no pure originality: another view of the copycat warsThe market doesn’t reward whoever thinks of it first. It rewards whoever controls how customers arrive and why they stay.
• StrategyApril 8, 2026 · 7 min read What to do about the copycatsIf you are doing something right, being copied is almost certain. The question isn’t how to avoid being copied. It’s how to make sure the copycats can’t replace you.
• Food & beverage9 min read Who will crack the hundred-store fresh bakery chain in Vietnam?Coffee has produced trillion-dong businesses like Highlands Coffee. Fresh bakery has produced very few names that have done the same.
• Strategy6 min read Behavior is the earliest signal of demandSome market shifts don’t show up in reports first. They show up earlier, in very small choices customers make.
• Leadership5 min read We are not short of people. We are short of capability.Many small and mid-sized businesses manage through people rather than through capabilities.
• Brand strategy6 min read The strategy lesson in Adidas’s Tang JacketCulture only creates commercial value when it is translated into contemporary demand.
• Fashion8 min read Why a 199,000-dong shirt can cost more than a 799,000-dong oneMany people’s wardrobes are fuller than ever, yet they still feel they have nothing to wear. That feeling is starting to change how they spend.
• Food & beverage5 min read Tea and coffee in Vietnam: why the winners winWhen the tide comes in, everyone gets a share. When it goes out, you find out what your business is really made of.